As you've probably noticed, one of my best friends in the whole world lives in Tuscaloosa. You can read about her experiences these past few days here. Now that she is in a safe place, I feel like it's time I should be helping out other folks in the area.

Here are some ways you can help.

CBS42 has a list of ways to donate water, non-perishable food items, clothing, etc., for people who are within driving distance.

A couple things you should know: They are looking most for money, bottled water, and non-perishable food items, flashlights, batteries, hand sanitizer, as well as gift cards to stores like Wal-Mart, Lowes, and other big chain stores that are located in the area.

Anyone who sends me confirmation of a donation of $10 or more (you can send me a photo of a text confirmation if you do the text to the Red Cross or Salvation Army thing) will get a black and white drawing of a single figure (person, animal or thing). If you send $50 or more, I will draw 2-3 figures for you. You could have a usericon like my usericon, for only $10!

So I had this dream this morning that I was back in high school. David Spade was one of my classmates. I also wound up being a pokemon trainer, as it was very big in that school. Our specialty was (apparently) fighting hot sandwiches.

Me, I specialized in patty melts. I spent hours going through the school, having conversations with all the patty melts, trying to evaluate their level of fighting spirit. I was particularly effective at this, compared to my classmates, as I was the only one who could speak patty melt. Some sort of Doctor Dolittle thing, I don't even.

So, eventually, I found one with the right spirit, and we trained together (I think that there may have been a montage), and the day of the big competition showed up. As I was getting my fighting sandwich prepared with a last-minute conditioning round of training, Spade showed up and shoved me and my sandwich into a storage room with a sturdy door and locked us in.

I tried the door several times, and couldn't do anything. So I got clever. The door was set back in the room a little, so there were walls... sort of around the corner on each side of it. I went around to this side, and knocked a little bit to find the steel framing studs, and them smashed my way through the drywall between them, my faithful sandwich hot on my heels. I got out behind Spade, and knocked him flying with one punch (of course: it's my dream) as my patty melt chased his tuna melt down the hall.

Then the alarm went off.

I'm not eating hot tapioca pudding right before bedtime ever again. But at least I got to punch out David Spade.

There ya go. Where I think Supernatural is going this season. By all means, shoot holes in it: I'm interested to see whether it holds water. Whether or not I'm right in this, the season's shaping up to be truly epic.

Okay, so I'm a weirdo. I've never even given a thought to a posting client until recently. In the course of trying to find a way to help my friend julia_here determine a way to post things with less insane-making hand coding, and after seeing the ease in which the magnificent cleolinda posts huMONgous amounts of really cool linkspam all at once, and seeing today that she uses this semagic thingie, I decided to give it a try. So far, so snood good. Doesn't help julia_here any, at the moment, because I need to find a mac-supported client for it, but this will make things hella easier for my lazy ass.

Sorry to take your username in vain, Julia, and you may not need anything like this after your own recent discoveries of useful mac-resident formatting stuff, but this resident-on-the-computer program that isn't another window seems pretty cool to me so far.

So some linkspam of my own, if this works. And first is Oh So Wrong, a blog started by a couple of friends of mine who have decided to document things that disturb and warp them greatly.

Next is a youtube of the 1956 Grand National steeplechase at Aintree, where Dick Francis' horse suffered a blowout a few dozen yards from the finish line, resulting in him being asked to write his autobiography, and thence leading to his Mystery-writing career.

My father's in the hospital as I type this. He's had a stroke, and while it hit him relatively mildly as far as strokes can go, it's taken his speech output and the fine motor-function use of his right hand and foot.

He can still understand everything that's said to him and around him, as witness his ability to laugh at complicated jokes, and he's already begun a determined effort to physically rehabilitate himself, moving his leg up and down with a grim effort.

His ability to speak in complex sentences waxes and wanes: the idiot excuse for a doctor at the hospital says that he may have a sort of "wavery" partial recovery.

Why is the doctor at the hospital an idiot? Well, there's a treatment called TPA that has a chance of helping stroke victims recover from strokes if applied withing three hours of the event. When we called the ambulance, dad was having a Transient Ischemic Attack, which is a sort of precursor to a stroke: reduced blood flow, but not fully interrupted. He was aphasic, but still able to walk, if shakily. The woman on the ambulance noticed his stroke-symptoms came on AS they were taking him to the hospital, that he'd lost strength in his right arm progressively during the ride, and reported same to the doctors and nurses at the hospital.

The doctors at the hospital decided to date the event of dad's stroke from the time mom had last seen him with full use of speech: 10:15, rather than 11:45, after the ambulance had been called, but before he actually had a full-on stroke. We tried to get them to give him the TPA treatment, but the nurse on duty decreed that it was too late, even though three hours from even his more conservative time had not yet elapsed. He wanted to be darned good and sure dad had had an actual STROKE before applying TPA. When we asked why, he said that there was a 7% chance of bleeding in the brain if it had NOT been a normal clot-based stroke.

I asked dad if he wanted to risk it, the seven percent chance of quick death versus a possible but not guaranteed fix for some damaged tissue in his brain: he nodded and made affirmative noises much like frankenstein's monster. This apparently does not qualify as informed consent under Florida law.

So they rush him off for the CT scan. Bring him back. No sign of stroke. So they rush him off for an MRI. THAT shows the stroke. By this time, dad's regaining some use of his hand again, and is able to answer questions with one-word answers. He even tells the doctor that his pain and strange sensation started in his leg. At this point, Idiot Doctor tells us that "spontaneous improvement (Dad talking and pointing to his foot) contraindicates use of TPA, and anyways, we're WAY out of the time limit for it" as gauged from when my mom last saw him, not as based on when he was brought in, and the timing of the event whereby his right freaking side stopped working.

So dad goes through a bit of time where he's unable to speak (still understands English fine, just can't speak it) and I talk to the doctor, worriedly. This is when he tells me that Dad's recovery will likely be "wavery" as in have its ups and downs. He improves enough to talk with the neurologist when he comes in: the neurologist chews him out for not taking his plavix (which dad had stopped taking because it made him feel as if he'd prefer to be dead, so can't blame him there) or aspirin which, okay, maybe having easily-ruptured skin due to aspirin usage isn't as much of a downside as having a stroke, but jesus, water under the bridge, Doc!

Neuro tells us that dad will not have a complete recovery, but he will recover some. They put him on an Aspirin and vasodilating med called Agranox to keep his blood pressure elevated to some optimum post-stroke level to keep the blood flowing properly through his brain as best they can without kicking more clots loose.

So he's still down in the emergency room now, waiting for a bed in the Progressive Care Unit. Christian drove over from Tallahassee when I told him, and is watching him now. He'll be calling me when there's news, and he let me and mom go home to rest for a little while.

Heh... Mom was offering to help him cut up his dinner: "Do you want help, Jim? Do you want me to help you?"

"Grumble grumble"

"Do you want me to help you?"

I interrupt. "No mom, he clearly doesn't want any help. Doesn't change the fact that he may need some help, however" which sets Dad to laughing and smiling at me with his eyes. Mom laughs too, and he lets her have the knife to saw up his chicken so he can spear it with his fully dexterous left hand.

Thank god he's not useless with his off hand, like my mom and brother are.

I am so freaking worried about and for him.

EDIT AS OF MIDNIGHT

He's back to speaking with his normal fluence and competence. No telling about his motor skills, but he's talking again, in his normal overwhelmingly prolix manner.

My mom spent part of the evening yesterday at an event where James Marsters spoke back-and-forth with a small number of his fans.

In the course of this, James stated that (as far as work-related kisses go) he had enjoyed the experience of kissing John Barrowman more than he had enjoyed his experiences kissing Sarah Michelle Gellar.